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Horrible twists of fate are what deliver players to sledge hockey. But it's the character that delivers a team, the wins, the fun and the inspiration for any hockey lover, able-bodied or not. And look no further than the American national team, which will be challenging for the bronze medal Saturday at the 2011 World Sledge Hockey Challenge at London's Western Fair Sports Centre. The twists of fate - as a look at some of the U.S. players reveals - can be a birth defect, a car crash, or a mine on a battlefield that delivers broken and twisted bodies occupied by people who refuse to give up.

Taylor Chace loves hockey. He's played it most of his life.

What many people don't know is that Chace was once a very good ice hockey player. But when he was 16 he was checked and suffered a broken back and what's described as an "incomplete spinal cord injury" that's left him partially paralyzed below the waist.

So, after the injury, Chace simply changed his focus to sledge hockey.

"I played hockey my whole life. It's what I'd done every day," he said. "Unfortunately, I had the accident but it's led me to some of the best times of my life."

Today, Chace is captain of the U.S. national team, its leader "on and off the ice" according to his coach, Ray Mulata.

"This sport does a lot for people with disabilities," Chace said. "It gives them a reason every day to be happy about life, that there are things out there they can achieve every day. They need to realize they can be just as normal as before, that you're an athlete again."

Chace arrived late to the World Challenge this week, staying behind to finish his last year at university studying sport management.

It was 11 p.m. on Jan. 15, 2007, on a dark road in Berthoud, Colo., when best friends Tyler Carron and Nikki Landeros were changing a flat tire when a car driven by a student they knew from their high school slammed into them.

Carron and Landeros, now 21, both lost their legs that night, but not their hearts.

Today, they're teammates on the U.S. national sled hockey team.

When they were recovering in hospital, the two pals were introduced to a variety of sports adapted for people with physical challenges, including sledge hockey, which caught Landeros's attention since he played ice hockey before the accident. Carron had never played hockey, opting instead for football and wrestling.

But they decided to give it a try.

"We just kind of tried to roll on with life," said Carron.

Said Landeros: "We didn't want to let that (accident) keep us down. We're alive and we might as well have fun. It's a blessing."

In February 2007, a month after Landeros and Carron lost their legs in a horrible crash, Rico Roman was in Iraq, a member of the U.S. army on patrol when he was injured by an improvised explosive device.

Roman's left leg was amputated above the knee and he returned home to his wife, Nathalie and two young children, daughter Juliet, now 9, and son Raul, now 7.

While recovering at Brooke Army Medical Center in San Antonio, Texas, he was approached by a representative from Operation Comfort, an organization dedicated to helping injured U.S. military personnel, who asked him to try sledge hockey.

"I never played hockey and didn't even watch it," said the 30-year-old native of Portland, Ore.

"I knew what a puck was and I'd seen some of it, but ever since I tried it, I was hooked."

There's no question that sled hockey has had a profound effect on Roman's life.

"It's just such a blast, and to compete at this level in another way for my country is beyond what I believed I could ever do again. I just hope I can stay on the team to play at the Olympics."

Alexi Salamone has been a member of the U.S. national sledge hockey team since 2003, twice representing his country at the Paralympic Winter Games, winning bronze in Torino, Italy, in 2006 and gold in Vancouver last year.

Not bad for a kid born in northern Chernobyl 14 months after the nuclear reactor meltdown there. Salamone arrived in the world with deformed legs that were amputated when he was four years old. He said he doesn't know how he came to be an orphan, but he does know he found a loving family in Susan and Joseph Salamone, who adopted him at age six and brought him to their Grand Island, N.Y. home.

Salamone refused to let his disability keep him down. Outfitted with prosthetic legs, he participated in a variety of sports, including hockey.

"I remember putting on the shin pads," said Salamone, 23, who hopes to study business finance at junior college this year.

"My prosthetic legs were made of titanium, but I saw the other kids with shin pads and I wanted them too."

He tried sledge hockey and was hooked, progressing quickly and joining the national team at 16.

Barely 17, Dan McCoy looks his age but plays sledge hockey well beyond his years as a member of the U.S. national team.

When you meet him, you're greeted by a big smile and firm handshake.

McCoy, son of Angie and Mark of Cheswick, Pa., seems almost indifferent to his disability and the fact his body is racked by spina bifida - a birth defect caused by the incomplete formation of vertebrae - and hydrocephalus: a medical condition in which there's an abnormal accumulation of fluid in the brain.

And while he's the U.S. team's youngest member, McCoy is arguably the sport's most enthusiastic proponent.

It was after watching the U.S. sledge hockey team take gold at the 2002 Paralympic Winter Games in Salt Lake City that McCoy's passion for the sport soared.

"When I saw them bring home that gold medal I thought, 'I could go far in this sport,' " said McCoy.